Musical instruction has existed for as long as music itself. The cultural importance of music and its almost universal appeal explain the motivation for these historical efforts. In response to this need, many instructional approaches have been employed. Such approaches usually begin with the use of conventional music notation, and the focus is almost entirely on the major scale. Since conventional music notation is sometimes perceived to be obscure and forbidding to beginners, other approaches have been introduced.
Instruction relating to understanding the musical octave as a strictly chromatic entity is a more advanced topic, and thus is a greater challenge. But mastering this level of understanding is essential for competent modern musicians. Relatively few instructional approaches, however, have been directed strictly to the chromatic subdivision of the musical octave. For example, Slonimsky's “Thesaurus of Scales and Musical Patterns” is authoritative but is generally considered too demanding for most beginners. The fact that these prior efforts have met with only limited success is testimony to the pedagogical subtlety of this topic.
The present invention constitutes an advanced and novel procedure that transcends many of these pedagogical difficulties and meets particular instructional needs toward a deeper understanding the musical octave. It is directed to subject matter relating specifically to (a) the arithmetic relationships of intervals ranging from a single half-step or semitone to the full octave, and (b) the number or amount of half-steps contained in these intervals.